Web Caching Basics: Terminology, HTTP Headers, and Caching Strategies

Introduction

Intelligent content caching is one of the most effective ways to improve the experience for your site’s visitors. Caching, or temporarily storing content from previous requests, is part of the core content delivery strategy implemented within the HTTP protocol. Components throughout the delivery path can all cache items to speed up subsequent requests, subject to the caching policies declared for the content.

In this guide, we will discuss some of the basic concepts of web content caching. This will mainly cover how to select caching policies to ensure that caches throughout the internet can correctly process your content. We will talk about the benefits that caching affords, the side effects to be aware of, and the different strategies to employ to provide the best mixture of performance and flexibility.